How We Score

We think that you can trust the Techwalla Score because it represents a snapshot of the Internet’s most trusted professional reviews. We don’t manipulate the Techwalla Score in any way, so it’s a pure look at what professional reviewers think about a particular product.

TL;DR

The Techwalla Score is an average of all of the ratings we can find from sites that grade the products they review.

Techwalla Score

Some details: We convert all numerical scores into a base of 100 points before crunching the numbers. So if a particular review is based on 5 stars (as many review sites are) and the site gave a product 4.5 stars, that translates to a 90% rating from that site. This way, all sites – whether they score based on 4 stars, 5 stars, 1-10, 1-100,or a certain number of interpretative dance moves, contribute fairly to the Techwalla Score.

Some sites do not offer a score for their reviews at all. Gizmodo, for example, often writes excellent, in-depth reviews but does not offer a 5-star-based bottom line. We include reviews like these in the Reviews section of our Product Review Page, but that review has no effect on the Techwalla Score.

The Techwalla Score appears at the top right of the page, under the watchful eyes of Wally, our robo mascot.

Would Buy It Again

Techwalla readers also have an opportunity to weigh in with their opinion. On every Product Review Page you’ll find the chance to rate the product by answering the question, "would you buy this again?" The Would Buy It Again score is an average of that vote. You can read this as “Given what they know now after using it a while, this percentage of Techwalla readers would buy this thing again.”

If you rate a product, you also have an opportunity to leave a user review. To make it easy to get a sense of what people think about the product, we put all the positive reviews -- from folks who would buy it again -- on one side of the page. The negative reviews are on the other.

Some Really Geeky Notes About the Techwalla Score

Scores mean different things to different people, and even a seemingly objective rating of, say, 88% is subject to a lot of interpretation. The key problem: different people – and web sites -- have varying opinions of what rating is good, excellent, fair, and so on. Consequently, some sites grade "harder" than others.

Another issue: Star ratings can "feel" different than their numeric equivalent. 4 stars might seem like a pretty respectable score – but when you see the same score represented as 80%, it can seem like a relatively low rating.

The bottom line

Numeric scores might give you a decent feel for how good a product is, but for the best results, it’s a really good idea to read some reviews. Luckily, we round up as many as we can possibly find. And don’t forget to poll your friends!